Enhanced word learning and neural synchrony during children’s storytelling

Children learn better through shared social experiences like storytelling, where they benefit as both listeners and tellers. Encouraging children to tell stories is a form of scaffolding, an instructional strategy in which learners and instructors are actively engaged. While the educational benefits of storytelling and scaffolding are well-documented, their underlying neural processes remain underexplored. Shared experiences are generally reflected in neural synchrony, which is often linked to comprehension. This study examined learning outcomes and neural synchrony in young school-aged children engaged in storytelling through either scaffolding or passive listening. Results showed that scaffolding improved learning outcomes and was associated with higher synchrony between teacher and young learner. However, these learning benefits disappeared in remote learning environments, highlighting the importance of face-to-face interaction for active learning strategies. Taken together, the heightened cortical synchrony between teacher and learner in face-to-face settings points to the benefits of active interaction as a learning strategy.